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How do I get the trigger time (timestamp) from my scope?

Question:

How do I get the trigger time (timestamp) from my scope?

Answer:

When a waveform is acquired on the DPO/DSA/MSO 5K 7K 70K Series oscilloscopes, the scope records a timestamp of when it was triggered to acquire that waveform. However, fetching the value of this timestamp is not always so obvious.

The timestamp from the last acquired waveform can be fetched from the instrument over the remote interface using the following command.

HORizontal:FASTframe:TIMEStamp:FRAMe:<wfm>? <NR1>

Where <wfm> is the name of the waveform source (i.e. CH1, REF1, etc.) and <NR1> is an integer value selecting the frame number.

Based on the format of the command it would seem that this command is only valid for waveforms acquired using the Fast Frame feature of the oscilloscope. However, this is not true. Internally a single waveform (Fast Frame off) is no more than the first frame of a Fast Frame set. For this reason, you can use this command to fetch the timestamp for the single waveform acquisition.

For example, if you would like to fetch the timestamp of the channel 1 waveform, you would send the command

HORizontal:FASTframe:TIMEStamp:FRAMe:CH1? 1

And this would return a response similar to the following

"14 May 2018 15:36:44.255 204 573 571"

Note that the timestamp includes a Date, Time and Fractional seconds for when the scope was triggered.

This command can also be used to find the trigger timestamp within .wfm files. To do so, first load the .wfm file into one of the reference waveforms then use the name of the reference waveform as the <wfm> piece of the command. For example: